It’s More Than Customer Drive-Offs.

Help your customers protect themselves.

By Bill Jones

With rising fuel prices, the frequency and severity of fuel theft incidents have been on a rapid increase over the past year. Retail operators are familiar with the issue of fuel theft because of damaged dispensers, unexplained product inventory discrepancies, and the necessity for more stringent fuel authorization procedures.

The issue has even caught the attention of the general public. In July, CNN reported on the theft of nearly 1,000 gallons in a single incident at a convenience store in South Florida. The PEI member service technician quoted in the CNN piece reported that he was averaging two repairs a week of dispensers that had been damaged by vandals.

The incident that CNN reported reflects two trends. The rising number of theft incidents was first noted more than a year ago at travel center sites, where the fuel transactions for truckers are large. Recently, however, the problem has become more prevalent at conventional retail sites like convenience stores.

A Variety of Ways to Steal
Fuel theft occurs at multiple points in the fuel handling and transfer process, including the following:

• During fuel deliveries into a storage tank
• When service work is being done at the site
• When a dispenser has been authorized for a transaction
• As a consequence of malfunctioning equipment at the forecourt.

Not only are fuel thieves aggressive, they are getting quite brazen.

Fuel thieves hid a storage bladder in a truck trailer to remove fuel. The thieves were apprehended during the theft.

Of course, the most visible effect of fuel theft is when dispensers have been tampered with or disabled. The thieves' goal is to ensure that product withdrawals in excess of the amounts authorized or seen at the store's POS console are not recorded. They can accomplish this by tampering with keypads within the dispenser, jamming teeth on the totalizer that is keeping track of ongoing sales, or by tampering with or destroying the pulser which records sales for display and payment.

Tanks as well as dispensers are vulnerable. Thieves have gained direct access to tanks and have stolen product while sites are busy, typically when the store cashier has not noted that a truck or van has been parked over the tank pad. Similar thefts have taken place after hours at sites that are not open 24 hours.

Shortfalls upon deliveries are not uncommon. In the most egregious cases, truck stop operations have been shorted during a delivery by the volume of product retained by the entire compartment on a transport. In other cases, the transport has done a phantom drop at another site and shorted the paying customer for whom the product was intended. Generally, delivery theft takes place at active facilities that are receiving deliveries on an ongoing basis.

Taking a Stand
Petroleum retailers who are working diligently to stem theft at their sites are instituting multiple approaches to defend themselves. The primary tools at their disposal are workforce awareness, dispenser retrofit kits and meticulous fuel inventory recordkeeping to spotlight potential problems.

The pulser is being destroyed by inserting a crowbar into the cabinet.

At the outset, retailers must train their retail supervisors that theft is a genuine problem. Cashiers should be trained to be alert to vehicles that linger at fuel islands after a transaction has been authorized. In the case of one watchful supervisor, steady lines of trucks at one fueling position signaled that an investigation of the fueling dispenser was required, resulting in the identification of a defective dispenser solenoid that allowed fuel to be given away. Additionally, more video surveillance cameras are being installed at fueling islands, and shift managers are making themselves more visible around the forecourt.

PEI service contractors and manufacturers are heavily involved in theft prevention measures. Where fueling facilities have been identified as theft targets, pulser guards are being installed to protect the dispenser head against intrusion. Heavy bolts are being installed so thieves can't get access to the dispenser internals through the dispenser doors. More recently, retailers have been installing switches, sensors and alarms to provide instantaneous warning of dispenser tampering.

Retailers are also addressing the vulnerability of tanks to direct theft and delivery shortfalls. Where possible, they are installing locks on fill caps to prevent direct theft from tanks, particularly at facilities that are closed at night. Fuel accounting personnel are closely comparing bills of lading from their suppliers against site inventory records maintained at their sites to identify potential systematic shortfalls during drops at their sites.

Fuel theft is a hot button issue right now for petroleum retailers. In this era of high fuel prices and slim margins, fuel theft is a cost fully burdened upon the retailer that has an immediate effect on the bottom line. Retailers are turning to PEI contractors, distributors and manufacturers to enlist their assistance with this urgent issue and are certain to need their support to get ahead of the fuel thieves, who have proven to be very inventive.

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The PEI Journal • Fourth Quarter 2008 • Volume 2, No. 4 • Contents are Copyright © Data Key Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved. • Nothing may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission of the publisher.